FIRE AND ICE

Good afternoon from civilized Mother England! We have been in the most extreme of weather temperatures in the last 24 hours. Greece is in the middle of a heat wave, we were in it, although we were quite oblivious to the fact until we disembarked from the ferry at Athens! We were greeted with the most intense heat Noel and I have ever been in, seriously, we could hardly breathe, and lugging our luggage and backpacks didn't help.

We followed the passengers en masse (100's of them) off the ferry and just went with the crowd, the leader of the pack seemed to know where to go because we arrived at the Athens underground station and its actually quite a simple travel system, we managed to make it to Syntagma Square without getting lost and only for a mere E1.60 for two. We had been approached earlier by a taxi driver to take us to our hotel for E25.00, hey, we are very street wise now and know the value of the euro. One euro equals $2.00 NZ.

We had about a 10 minute walk from the Square to the hotel and in that time we reckon we sweated litres and our clothes just clung to us, the sweat trickled from places we never knew sweat glands existed!!?? Not sure how we looked when we arrived at the hotel reception, but by god we needed a cold beer by then! That's when the receptionist told us temperatures had risen that day to the highest level in 25 years = 460C IN THE SHADE! Can you believe that? Man it was unbearably hot in the room, the aircon was on overtime but we simply stayed in our room with wet towels on our feet, naked and we still sweated! OK moving on....

We arrived in London 24 hours later to a temperature of 16oC....work out the temperature difference!

England just appeared to be so clean green fresh and the rain just washed all that heat from our bodies. We are quite happy to be in temperatures we are used too!

Today London is saddened by the news of a massive bomb scare alert in Haymarket, Piccadilly, and it seems ironic that Noel and I were there yesterday afternoon. We caught the bus to Piccadilly Circus and walked down Haymarket to NZ House, walked past the American Express office where the car was located this morning. We are numbed by the news today, but this is real life London, it is expected, and it brings to one senses the vulnerability of us wee kiwis on this side of the world away from our lovely safe New Zealand haven.

We are flat sharing in a fabulous suburb of Fulham, near Wimbledon, and we know we shall enjoy living here, loads of pubs, parks, cafes, restaurants, and all near to buses and tube. The sofabed will serve us (and our guests) well, we are really looking forward to having guests and are starting the bookings for the sofa bed now, so first in, first served!!!

On a more sobering thought, we are on the serious look out next week for jobs, and are meeting up with some old friends so we shall have more news for you soon. Tomorrow we are at The Slug, a pub in Fulham which is showing the All Black v Oz test at 10am. Noel and I have our all black scarves ready, our first encounter of a rugby match in a London pub. Roll on Saturday!

Thanks for the comments too, enjoy these photos, they certainly brought a tear to my eye when we saw them! Cheerio for now, Noel and Elsie